Hackers bring down website of Bulgarian President

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A denial-of-service attack brought down the website of the Bulgarian President on October 30, just two hours after head of state President Rossen Plevneliev told reporters he had asked the State Agency for National Security to investigate similar such attacks on the sites of the Central Election Commission and other state institutions on the October 25 election day.

The press office of the President said on October 30 that there were three million to 50 million visitors coming to the site every moment, the visits coming from Thailand. Under the pressure, the site collapsed, and hours later, was hardly loading.

At an 11am briefing on the morning of October 30, Plevneliev described the October 25 hacker attacks on the websites of the CEC, Interior Ministry and civic registration service as “not coincidental” and indicated he believed them to have been an attempt to discredit the idea of online voting, the issue put to Bulgarians in a national referendum held simultaneously with municipal elections that day.

Two hours later, at about 1pm, the denial-of-service attack on the President’s website, president.bg, began.

The October 25 national referendum produced a large majority in favour of online voting. However, turnout fell below the threshold required to bind the National Assembly to follow through with legislation.

Apart from asking SANS to investigate the voting day hacker attacks, Plevneliev said that he also had asked who at the Central Election Commission had given the instruction to provide voters arriving at polling stations with ballot papers for the local elections but not with ballot papers for the referendum.

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